So it looks like Obama is going to be President. I’d just like to go on record as saying that Obama is a politician, and he is not going to change things for the better. Like just about all politicians, he says things to win votes, especially among the impressionable and mega-conformist young people.

He won’t restore our liberties. He won’t reduce the power of the government.

If you think he will, you have bought into the system.

McCain (should he win) sure won’t do any of that stuff either. The difference is that Obama supporters seem to think he’s something new and special, instead of just the latest in a long line of chief executives who perpetuate the system and take more power for the federal government.

You had your chance to elect Ron Paul, or even Dennis Kucinich, but you all blew it, because you don’t *really* want change, you just want someone who talks about it, but in a nice non-threatening way (i.e. who won’t *actually* change things, because anything other than the status quo is scary).

Just remember, if you’d been alive in the times of American slavery, you wouldn’t have protested that much. Status Quo is king. Don’t rock the boat. Everyone else is doing it. It’s what we’re used to, so we aren’t shocked. No matter how shocking it ought to be.

Self-styled Progressives feel superior because they see their views as leading towards progress. And they think that can continue forever. They favor redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, because to them freedom should be ever expanding.

Except hardly anyone really wants that to happen, even the progressives. 100% freedom is simply anarchy, any society must limit the freedom of its citizens somewhat if it wants to exist. For example, do even the staunchest “pro-freedom” progressives really want it to be legal for people to engage in public sodomy in the middle of a toy store? No? Well then we can agree that there are limits to freedom then, can’t we? We just don’t agree on where they are.

At some point, if the progressives got all they wanted, they would become conservatives. They would then want to freeze things in place, because to go beyond that would actually make things worse for everyone, right? They just think people don’t have enough rights at the moment, but surely they have some stopping point, if they’ve thought that far ahead…

So all the talk of unending progress is just stupid, right? They don’t really want progress forever. There are always limits.

Conservatives are fools too though. They seem to all want to return to the “good old days.” Except there were no good old days. Some things were better a few years ago, if you’re against things like socially acceptable premarital sex and pornography. But what if you’re for equality of individuals without regard to race or sex? You wouldn’t want to return to the 50s. I wouldn’t even want to return to the 80s and have to endure smoking in every restaurant and public place. (Hooray for California for anti-smoking laws.)

The difference between the groups is that Progressives act like conventional morality is stupid and we should always march towards (their version of) progress. Conservatives believe in right and wrong. Progressives believe that the idea of right and wrong, is wrong. Conservatives concept of morality may be skewed, they might like conventional morality more because it’s conventional than because it’s actually right, but at least they take a stand.

Of the two groups, I view the Progressives as the most smug in their superiority while being the most myopic. The irony of that drives me from them.

Keep in mind the Progressives have made great strides over the years. But also keep in mind that today’s conservative is yesterday’s progressive. Martin Luther King Jr., with his radical ideas of racial equality, was surely no conservative. But if he were still alive, would he be preaching for the acceptance of same-sex marriage? What do the two have to do with each other, at all, really?

Let’s not tout “moving forward” as a good thing unless we know what we’re moving to, and know it’s better than where we’re at.

Movie theaters don’t show NC-17 related films. Presumably to avoid an outcry by people who are against excessive sex, violence, obscenity, etc, in movies.

As someone who is actually against such things myself, at first blush I might be tempted to say “bravo.” But the problem with that is that it doesn’t prevent the stuff I’m against. Rather, films that should be rated NC-17 are ever-so-slightly trimmed and resubmitted, resulting in the hardest of hard R-ratings.

The result is that NC-17 is barely used, and many films that certainly ought to have that rating are instead simply rated R. And idiot parents take their kids to see them.

I sure saw plenty of R-rated movies as a kid, and you know what? It messed me up. I wish I hadn’t done that. I wish my parents had been more responsible. But they’d buy me the ticket and drop me off.

I’d actually rather end the stigma of NC-17, so that movie-makers who want scenes of hideous bloodbathery or eroticerry could do so. Why? Because they are going to be passing it off as R anyway, so let them at least label it properly. It won’t be much worse than what we’ve got, and the R rating can be used for stuff that a responsible parent might actually take their child to.

The theaters only care about money. They won’t show NC-17, not because they care one whit about decency, but because they fear a boycott. And people don’t boycott R movies even if they are just as bad as NC-17. So that’s what they support.

The stigma of NC-17 has done nothing to stop obscenity from appearing in film; all it does is make it more accessible to young people, the ones who are least equipped to deal with it. That I know from experience.